A Conservative former mayor and veteran army reservist has been dramatically arrested in an early-morning police raid and charged with owning a live 70-year-old Nazi wartime gun.

Officers with search dogs swooped on the home of Councillor Jonathan Farmer, 56, of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and seized a German Walther PPK pistol dating back to the Second World War.

Police said they were acting on a tip-off and had a warrant to search his home for firearms. He will appear in court next Monday and could face a five-year jail sentence if found guilty.

I can’t for a minute imaging this is the only bring back pistol hiding out in some drawer or attic in the UK. If my grandfather had brought a pistol back from the war, there’s no law in the world that would make me part with it. I’d gladly risk jail time to preserve not only that piece of family history, but of the country’s history. But this is where the madness of the other side leads.

Freemen, not on the land but real freemen, are still around in a number of UK cities. Freedom of a city can be conferred in many ways. Freemen on the land are daydreamers with no understanding of constitutions, law or history.

Freemen of the City of Coventry have to have a completed a recognised apprenticeship in the city; Jonathan Farmer, who was in my year at school, did an engineering apprenticeship and has taken the oath of a freeman (as my great-grandfather did over a century ago). There is a Guild to which all freemen are admitted. There were many guilds over the centuries, but they are all combined.

The City of London has a number of craft guilds that date back hundreds of years. The Lord Mayor of the City of London, a square mile at the heart of London, is elected from amongst the freemen (as opposed to the Mayor of London, who is elected from the general populace of greater London). Membership of most of the craft lodges no longer requires a skill and is awarded to people nominated to join. It costs money. The Guilds, owning key land in London, are wealthy institutions and own schools etc. Attendance at one of the schools confers freedom of the City to both males and females. The City of London has rights going back hundreds of years which were reaffirmed in Magna Carta 1215 (never the law), 1216, 1225 and 1297. only 3 clauses of MC 1297 remain, including the one affirming the freedoms of the City of London.

Thank you, Cousin, for the interesting clarification on the British distinctions on the word “freeman.” Of course, I was implying that a Free Man isn’t prosecuted by his government for owning an antique, low-power pistol. Would this be what you are referring to by a daydreaming freeman of the land?

They refer to it being a “live” gun, because it hasn’t been permanently rendered inoperable. As a family heirloom, he could have had it drilled and welded to turn it into a solid hunk of metal that just resembled a pistol.